Author Archives: Barbara Frank

More Jobs Not Requiring College

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My kids are grown and my grandkids are little, so college isn’t really an issue in our family right now. But for homeschoolers, it looms large, so I like to share news of what’s going on in terms of whether or not teens can or should go to college. Lately I’m seeing more articles about companies no longer requiring new hires to have a college diploma, like this one and this one.

I see this as a good sign. I have nothing against going to college; in fact, my college experience was a great one. But I think that requiring every potential employee to have spent six figures (probably borrowed) to get that diploma is ridiculous, and I’m glad to see the landscape slowly changing.

Run, Don’t Walk, Away from Public Schools

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I’ve been accused of being negative about public school. It’s true, I’m guilty. When I was an inmate, er student, in the public schools, I thought it was a big waste of time. When I became a parent, I chose to homeschool my kids instead of putting them on the big yellow bus with the neighbor kids.

Public school was bad enough back then, but look at it now. Teachers complain that the students don’t listen to them because they’re allowed to be on their phones in class. Public school grads arrive at college unable to read at grade level or write a coherent paragraph. Meanwhile, political correctness and political bias run rampant.

Just recently, a Boston public school allowed a tombstone with the name of President Donald Trump at a school-sponsored Halloween event. On the other coast, a California school sponsored a scarecrow contest where one of the scarecrows was clearly meant to represent President Trump. This would never have been allowed in the schools I went to, as flawed as they were.

Of course, these specific behaviors, while condoned by the schools, are the fault of parents. But the schools allowed their behavior instead of forbidding it. While the institution of public schooling itself is one giant mistake, some of the families involved in the public schools are also problematic. How else can you explain parents who send their children to their local public library’s Drag Queen Story Time?

Run, don’t walk, away from the public schools (read John Taylor Gatto’s books for encouragement). If you’re not up for homeschooling, find a good private school. Don’t sentence your child to years in a failing system.

 

Repurposing My Corduroy Jeans

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The good news is that I lost weight. The bad news is that my lovely vintage corduroy jeans are way too big on me. They’re made out of strong and stretchy corduroy, the kind you can’t find in stores any more:

They’re a good brand, too:

What to do? Make them into corduroy pants for an active 5-year-old grandson. First up, smooth out one pants leg:

Then pin and cut out a boys’ pants pattern piece:

Do the same for the other pant leg and the other leg pattern piece. Then cut out the pocket:

Attach to the pocket piece something that makes the pants into “Superhero pants!” at the request of said grandson:

Follow pattern directions, and you have a “new” pair of Superhero pants. Front:

And back:

Then, so little sister gets something, too, make a pair of flannel Peppa Pig pants in a smaller size:

Those, of course, were not repurposed and required a trip to the fabric store for Peppa Pig flannel  🙂 Grandma doesn’t want anyone to feel left out!

 

Fall Table Topper

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Years ago, I bought a fall table runner kit that consisted of precut squares to be sewn together randomly, then surrounded by prairie points. I think prairie points are an awful waste of fabric, so I decided to use all the squares for a table topper instead.

The leaf quilting motif is one I tore out of a quilting magazine. The stars are something I came up with as I went along:

This is the first time I’ve ever done machine binding. I usually hand-stitch binding, but machine binding sure goes fast! I learned how to do machine binding from Katy Quilts.